A former Naughty Dog veteran who worked on The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 is more excited about the idea of shorter games rather than “monolithic” blockbusters like GTA 6 or The Elder Scrolls 6.
Matt Radford was a visual effects artist on some of Naughty Dog’s biggest hits before opening his own studio called 5th Corner, and he recently spoke about the merits of shorter games in an interview with Kiwi Talkz (embedded below).
“I’m 38 years old,” Radford says. “And I think that there’s also something intimidating to me about a GTA 6 or, you know, another Elder Scrolls. I, personally, am really looking for shorter experiences that are focused [and] that I have a great time with. That excites me probably more.”
Part of his reasoning is the time available to him and other players. A game that runs for upwards of 50 hours can be a huge time sink that’s simply not feasible for a huge portion of people to complete, while shorter campaigns can be enjoyed in a weekend or two.
“Even The Last of Us 2, I thought, was so long… I really loved those earlier Uncharted games when they were like 6 to 8 hours,” he adds.
The other part of the equation is the ballooning budgets of video game development. Modern AAA games can cost over $200 or $300 million to produce, but those costs might be able to come down if studios focused on tighter experiences.
“GTA 6 is gonna be awesome, I’m sure,” he continues. “And I think collectively as an industry we want it to succeed. No gamer will be happy if it failed because it would not be a good sign for the business.”